Podcast Episode 41: Honorary Contracts

Hello, I'm Heidi from H&R Healthcare. Welcome to today's Lindsay Legg Club podcast. I work for H&R Healthcare who are one of the Lindsay Legg Club industry partners. Today I'm going to talk to you a little bit about honorary contracts and what they are and how they've been key in supporting the NHS during the current pandemic. So what is an honorary contract? It's different from when you volunteer in the NHS because a contractual agreement has to be put in place when you're going in to do a period of work but you're employed by elsewhere. So you're not employed by the NHS Trust but you need to go into that particular area to do a period of work, research or training but you won't be paid by that organisation. Because that individual trust has a duty of care to the patient that it is responsible for, they have insurances that they have to have for all of their employees and by having this agreement in place, although you're not paid by that trust, you are covered by their insurance. Industries worked very closely with the NHS for many years, so what's the difference in what I do on a day-to-day basis with H&R to what I do in the honorary contract that I've got with a local NHS trust. I am a qualified nurse, I've been qualified for over 20 years and I visit various NHS trusts and I offer support where it's needed but as a non-NHS employee even though I am a registered nurse I'm strictly prohibited from carrying out any activities that could have a direct bearing on the quality of the patient care or on the quality of prevention, diagnosis or treatment of ill or illness that could cause any injury to a person or loss to a person. An example of that would be I can support a clinician in making their decision in that I can give them education about the products that H&R supply. They then have to make the clinical decision on what a patient can have but it's down to them. I don't have a direct influence however on an honorary contract and I'll come on to a little bit more on my personal experience in a short while but on an honorary contract I would have a direct influence on that patient care. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about my personal experience with an honorary contract. When the Covid pandemic hit, obviously going out into NHS trusts was limited but I was very aware that as a qualified nurse I did have skills that could help when they were in such a stressful time. I had a discussion with another colleague who's also a qualified nurse and we decided that if we could help we would so we went to our manager and asked if that they would support us approaching an NHS trust which we did and they obviously were very welcoming for us going in and working. My background is in district nursing and has always been in wound care, I've worked in wound care ever since I qualified so it made sense for me to look for a tissue viability role. A couple of months into the pandemic we started work with a local trust and in that role I am a tissue viability nurse. I'm one of the team, I do patient assessments, anything that any of the other tissue viability nurses I'm also expected to do. We do lower limb care, dopplers, anything that's expected of a tissue viability nurse and a lot of people will question because I am employed by industry how does that affect my role working in that honorary contract as a nurse and it just doesn't because I'm covered by the Nursing and Midwifery Council Code of Conduct so that means that whatever is best for the patient within my assessment stay up to date with my education and training and I give the patient that assessment and the very best care that they need. That's a little bit of a whistle stop tour but I hope that has been interesting and given you a bit of an overview on the difference between working in industry with the NHS and actually working on an honorary contract and how this is key in supporting the NHS. Thank you very much for listening.